CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonurllib
fweigl
fweigl

Reputation: 22008

Importing urllib in Python 3.5

I have the following code: 

import urllib
import wget as wget
request = urllib.request.Request(url)

For the last line PyCharm shows a warning:

Cannot find reference 'request' in '__init__.py'

The code works finde though, I receive a reply from the server I query.

The import import wget as wget is being shown as unused. When I remove that import, I get the following exception at runtime:

AttributeError: module 'urllib' has no attribute 'request'

Can somebody explain to me

  1. How these two things are connected
  2. Why urllib.request.Request is obviously wrong(?) despite being documented here?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2112

Answers (2)

JBernardo
JBernardo

Reputation: 33387

Because request is a submodule, you have to write its name so Python will also import it

import urllib.request

Reasoning:

If you have a module with many submodules, loading all of them might be an expensive thing to do and might create problems with things that are unrelated to your program.

Imagine there's a module called urllib.foo that only works on Windows and you are working on Linux. If the import system were to import all submodules, it could crash on your system even if you don't want to use it.

The wget module you are using imports the urllib.request to use for itself, so python will cache its import and it will be part of the urllib object.

Upvotes: 1

Sjoerd Job Postmus
Sjoerd Job Postmus

Reputation: 161

urllib itself does not import urllib.request. Module wget probably does an import urllib.request. From there on, urllib.request actually is referenceable.

Suggested solution: write import urllib.request, and then it should work without the import wget.

Upvotes: 1

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